Measuring the impact of mental health programs for HR

“Addressing mental health at work effectively will help prepare for the future of work and a changing world”. That sentence can be found in the foreword of the 2022 Guidelines on Mental Health at Work by the World Health Organization. It was true three years ago, and it is still true today.

This report links mental health with increased presenteeism, decreased productivity, and high turnover. They recommend three levels of programs to support mental health in the workplace: at the organizational, managerial, and employee levels.

While more companies (about 75% of Tech companies) now recognize the importance of mental health and implement a level of support through different types of tools and programs, very few employees actually use those resources.

This poses the question: How can the impact and effectiveness of these programs be measured?

Setting Clear Objectives and Key metrics

Before you start, decide what to measure and why. What is the goal of implementing mental health programs in your company, and how do these align with your organisation’s priorities?

You can set a mix of goals regarding:

Here are some examples of common objectives and corresponding key metrics.

• As stress is one of the primary mental health issues at work, aiming to lower stress levels among employees is a very relevant objective.

• Key metric: workplace errors or accidents linked to stress, as well as absenteeism due to stress.

• Key metrics: absenteeism and presenteeism rates, as well as turnover rate, by monitoring voluntary departures.

• Key metrics: The percentage of employees participating in mental health programs, workshops, or using resources, which can be monitored through the HR dashboard of the Siffi app.

• Key metrics: Assess the adoption rates of flexible work policies and their impact on employee satisfaction through surveys and feedback loops.

• Key metrics: Compare program costs against benefits such as reduced absenteeism, improved productivity, or lower turnover rates.

Data Collection Methods

Once you have decided what you want to focus on (try to pick only a few to start with), it is time to plan out how you will collect the data and how often.

Regardless of the methods you choose, you need to establish a baseline against which you can benchmark your results. That is your pre and post-program launch assessments.

Regarding the tools you want to use for these assessments, you can manually keep track of them in spreadsheets or use the in-app trackers and dashboards from your service provider, such as Siffi. If you want to track more than what is on the dashboard and keep everything in one place, you can use our template for KPI tracking here by saving your own copy and adapting it to your specific needs.

Using the Data

Once you start gathering data and feedback, it is time to put them to work and use those insights to refine and improve your program and initiatives to meet your employees’ needs better. But do not change everything at once. Only adjust one thing at a time to be able to measure the results accurately.

It is also important to keep updating each initiative’s cost-saving and productivity gains.

We live in a world where data is king. If we want to live well in that world, it is necessary to start measuring mental health initiatives to prove that they are essential for the overall health of the whole organization.